He could fancy that brow suddenly contracted, those thin lips suddenly puffed out, those nostrils expanded and the whole reptile hatred of the demon-reptile brain suddenly writing itself in furious lines, speaking, shrieking aloud.
A feeling of triumph filled his breast; he had got one step further towards his antagonist.
He turned the back of the photograph to the light and examined it. There was no writing upon it; and yet, on closer examination, there were some indistinct scratches on the upper part, as though pencil writing had once been there and erased. On closer examination still, he could just make out what seemed a capital M, and close to the M some letters vaguely dented into the shiny card by the pressure of the pencil that had written whatever had been written and erased.
“Thank you,” said Freyberger, when he had finished his inspection of the thing. “This photograph is very interesting and it may help us considerably in our work. May I keep it?”
“Well,” said the woman, “it is not mine to give; it was found in Mr Kolbecker’s room by Mrs Stairs after he left for Cumberland, and she brought it to me. It’s no value to me, and if it will help you to find out who killed him you had better take it. Mind you, I look to you to see me righted, and I don’t want this house brought into the papers; it’s hard enough getting a living without getting a name for being mixed up in murders.”
“I will see that you don’t suffer in any way,” replied the other, “and I will give you a receipt for this photograph, just as I gave you one for those pieces of marble this afternoon.”
He wrote out a receipt on a sheet of paper torn from his notebook, and with the photograph in his possession left the house.
When he reached the Yard, it was a little after twelve.
The chief was absent, snatching a few hours’ sleep possibly, after a day of fourteen hours’ solid work, in which the consideration of the Gyde case had been only an item.
Inspector Dennison was in, and Freyberger found him and put the evidence he had collected in his hands.